


Let The River Flow

by akingdomofunicorns



Series: All These Great Houses [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Abortion, F/M, Family, Forced Abortion, Gen, Multi, One-Sided Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-06-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 22:13:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akingdomofunicorns/pseuds/akingdomofunicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no stopping life from moving forward, like the rivers that make them strong. Water is the essence of life. They're Tullys, their strength is in the rivers, in each other, as a Family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All I did, I did for us (Hoster)

He remembers a time when his daughters were just girls playing at being wives; now they’re women who’ve just been wedded and are about to be bedded by their husbands. They both look beautiful, his girls, hair the colour of copper and fire, skin milky pale covered with faint freckles, tanned shoulders kissed by the southern sun and the water of his rivers, blue eyes clear as the sky… They’re just girls barely into womanhood, he thinks, Cat only nine-and-ten and Lysa seven-and-ten, Lysa still with full cheeks and dried tears at the corners of her eyes.

It makes him feel sick when he thinks of why she’s crying, of how ungrateful she’s being; yes, she’s just a girl, but she was stupid enough to ruin herself with that stripling wretched boy and now he has to give her to a man twenty years older than himself; he would have kept her with him for a bit longer, made a match with a well born man, young and gallant to appeal to her, and handsome too, if she so desired… But Lysa is ruined and the rage keeps creeping up his chest to his throat, choking him, burning his skin.

It’s more than he could have hoped for, Lord Arryn, an honest man, honourable, kind, gentle, smart… Well born and a great leader, too. Cat is now Lady Stark, Lysa, Lady Arryn, and soon he will be able to forget that sweet Lysa ever betrayed him and sullied the family’s good name.

She will understand, Lysa will, his lovely Lysa will understand it and will be grateful, in the end, once she’s settled in the Eyrie, surrounded by children and loved by her husband and in the end, she will _thank_ him; because all he’s ever done, he’s done it for his family. 


	2. I hold this together (Minisa)

She knows it’s time for her to go, she can feel the blood dripping down her thighs and it doesn’t _stop_. But she can’t go, not yet, she needs time to mourn her baby, Edmure is so young still and her girls need her, they will become women soon and they can’t do that alone; Hoster won’t know how to handle them, he’s a good father, but they are girls, they need their mother…

She smells the blood, the sweat, the sickness; she smells death, darkness, fear (her own fear, her own blood, her own sweat, her own sickness, her own death) and she knows it’s coming and there’s nothing she can do about it; it doesn’t matter how much she fights, she’s getting weaker by the hour and the beating of her heart grows slower, fainter; it’s an echo of the life she’s lived, of the love she’s given and received, of the children she’s birthed, the man she’s loved, the sacrifices she’s made; it’s an echo of the woman she’s been.

And once she’s gone, everything will turn into dust; she’ll be nothing more than a memory in her family’s mind and everything that holds it together so tight will be almost gone —rope turned to string, weaker knots to bind their hearts. A little girl to do her job, to make it work, to make it right.

_How unfair_ , she thinks, _how unfair for my sweet Cat_.

But there’s nothing she can do.


	3. My eternal companion (Catelyn)

It has been duty that has made her who she is today and it will be duty alone which will stay forever by her side.

The baby sits heavy in her arms, all pale skin and pink cheeks, copper hair and blue eyes and her lord husband’s strong nose. He’s the most beautiful baby she’s ever seen, the warmest body she’s ever felt pressed against her own. She’s never loved anyone as much as she loves her son (not even Lysa, not even Edmure), never felt such a fear as when the fever struck him, never felt so betrayed as when Lord Eddard (“ _You may call me Ned, my lady, you are my wife_ ”) came back with a bastard child of his own in the arms of the pretty, brown-skinned wet-nurse, _Wylla_.

_Father would have his head for this_ , she thinks, _Father would_. But she knows it’s not true, not Father. Her uncle might, but it’s not their place to defend her honour anymore, it’s her husbands’, and he’s been the first to shame her, _dishonour_ her.

No matter, duty comes before honour and she does her duty, that she does. Because duty is her most faithful companion. 


	4. Worthless, Selfish, Mad (Lysa)

Sweetrobin is her only son, the only babe that’s survived her rotten womb and the horrible world they’ve been born in. Her Robert is a healthy and strong child, he is, he _must_ be, like the queen’s children, those golden boys and the pretty princess, who must be learning to be a witch and a whore, just like her mother. Her son is fine, he is perfect, he is _hers_ , like nothing has ever been. It’s all been Cat’s and Edmure’s and then Jon’s, always Jon —Jon is kind and Jon is just and Jon is old, so, so old, older than her own father.

She hates him, she does (she promised herself she would hate him forever on the day she married him, but he’s given her Robert at last, and she loved him that day), for she could have married Petyr if it weren’t for him and father. She would have given Petyr a babe, a daughter mayhaps, she always wanted a daughter, and Sweetrobin could have been his (she so wanted to call him Aidan, like Petyr’s father, but Jon took that away from her too and named him Robert, like the big, drunken King she hates so much too) if it weren’t for _father_. She hates him, her father, she hates him because he was mean and terrible and a liar, he murdered her babe, Petyr’s child, just because he loved Cat more, because he was jealous because Petyr loved her and she loved him and her Mama was dead.

She hates a lot of people (she repeats their names in her head, sometimes, over and over again: Father, Jon, King Robert, Eddard Stark for taking away her sister, Queen Cersei and her children, Maester Vyman who brewed the moon tea himself, Lord Stannis, Lord Tywin… she hates them all), but she loves her son and no one is going to take him from her, not even Jon. Specially not Jon.

They said she was worthless once she gave herself to Petyr, they said she was selfish when she weeped through her wedding, but she isn’t, and they’ll see.

When her beloved Petyr asks her if she’s ready to do it, she nods.


End file.
